Behavioural Ecology

"Behavioural Ecology is the first textbook in a field that emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s. It focuses on the fact that natural selection doesn’t operate in groups or species, but in individuals. This refinement of Darwin’s idea caused a revolution in biology. With its four subsequent editions, it had a massive effect on the way people viewed the natural world. It’s a collection of essays from the key players in the field. One of them, Geoff Parker, was a pioneer in ‘sperm competition’. When females mate with more than one male, Geoff noticed that the sperm would compete to fertilise the eggs. He wrote a groundbreaking paper in 1970 and he provides a chapter on the subject in this book. For a few years people thought the concept only applied to insects – Geoff’s speciality. In the mid-1970s I realised it could relate to birds. In the following decade, there was an incredible realisation that female promiscuity was largely ubiquitous in the animal kingdom. Darwin had said exactly the opposite – that most females were strictly monogamous. Geoff’s chapter summarises what we knew until this point. Exactly. Darwin assumed that the competition stopped once a partner was acquired. Geoff’s idea was that sexual selection continues after insemination, with males competing for fertilisation and not simply for a partner. Females are particularly promiscuous in the breeding season."